International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)

ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 2 Issue 3, March - 2013

Analysis Of Composite Material (Sandwich Panel) For Weight Saving

D. G. Vamja1, G. G. Tejani2
1
PG Student, School of Engineering, RK University, Rajkot, Gujarat, India.

2
Assistant Professor, School of Engineering, R.K. University, Rajkot, Gujarat, India.

ABSTRACT:

Material is the basic element of industry, foundry, and automobile application. Automobile industry used composite
material now a day for to get many mechanical properties of material like stress, strain, stiffness, shearing, bending
behaviour, thermal conductivity, and weight saving purpose. In automobile side weight saving is most important and
necessary now a day for to get more efficiency of fuel and increase load capacity of vehicle. So, by using composite
material we achieve weight reduction of material so we get above benefit and also increase service life of material by
getting more mechanical properties of material compare to basic material. In this paper basic review is presented based
on weight saving purpose in automobile application. By using various types of materials for composite material to get
mechanical properties and weight reduction is present and consider various literatures of research for composite
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material. By using above approach develop a new material for automobile application.

Keywords: Honeycomb Sandwich panel, Hexagonal core, Mechanical testing, Impact behaviour.
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 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 2 Issue 3, March - 2013

1. INTRODUCTION: elastic till failure occurs and show decreased failure

In the most general of terms, a composite is a
material that consists of two or more constituent
materials or phases. Traditional engineering
materials (steel, aluminium, etc.) contain impurities
that can represent different phases of the same
material and fit the broad definition of a composite,
but are not considered composites because the
elastic modulus or strength of the impurity phase is
nearly identical to that of the pure material. The
definition of a composite material is flexible and
can be augmented to fit specific requirements. In
this text a composite material is considered to be
one that contains two or more distinct constituents
with significantly different macroscopic behaviour
and a distinct interface between each constituent
(on the microscopic level). This includes the
continuous fiber laminated composites of primary
concern herein, as well as a variety of composites
not specifically addressed.
strain, when loaded in tension and compression.
Composites cannot be made from constituents with
divergent linear expansion characteristics. The
interface is the area of contact between the
reinforcement and the matrix materials. In some
cases, the region is a distinct added phase.
Whenever there is inter-phase, there has to be two
inter-phases between each side of the inter-phase
and its adjoin constituent. Some composites
provide inter-phases when surfaces dissimilar
constituents interact with each other. Choice of
fabrication method depends on matrix properties
and the effect of matrix on properties of
reinforcements. One of the prime considerations in
the selection and fabrication of composites is that
the constituents should be chemically inert non-
reactive.
1.2 Classification of composite material:

1.1 Composite material:

Fibers or particles embedded in matrix of another

material are the best example of modern day
composite materials, which are mostly structural.
Laminates are composite material where different
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layers of materials give them the specific character
of a composite material having a specific function
to perform. Fabrics have no matrix to fall back on,
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but in them, fibers of different compositions

combine to give them a specific character.
Reinforcing materials generally withstand
maximum load and serve the desirable properties.
Further, though composite types are often
distinguishable from one another, no clear
determination can be really made. To facilitate
definition, the accent is often shifted to the levels at
which differentiation take place viz., microscopic
or macroscopic.
In matrix-based structural composites, the matrix
serves two paramount purposes viz., binding the
reinforcement phases in place and deforming to
distribute the stresses among the constituent
reinforcement materials under an applied force.
The demands on matrices are many. They may
need to temperature variations, be conductors or
resistors of electricity, have moisture sensitivity
etc. This may offer weight advantages, ease of
handling and other merits which may also become
applicable depending on the purpose for which
matrices are chosen.
Solids that accommodate stress to incorporate other Fig.1.1 Major types of composite material [4]
constituents provide strong bonds for the
reinforcing phase are potential matrix materials. A 1.3 Sandwich panel:
few inorganic materials, polymers and metals have
found applications as matrix materials in the Sandwich structures (beams, panels etc.) consist of
designing of structural composites, with a combination of different materials that are placed
commendable success. These materials remain together so that the material properties of each one

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 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 2 Issue 3, March - 2013

can be utilized for the structural advantage of the

whole assembly. Sandwich panels generally consist
of three significant components, two thin, stiff face
sheets and a thick, light and weaker core. The
variety of types of sandwich constructions basically
depends upon the configuration of the core, not to
mention the material constituents. The most
common types of core are: foam, honeycomb and
web core truss. The faces that must be stiff, strong
and thin; are separated and bonded to a light,
weaker and thick core.
The adhesion of both materials is very important
for the load transferring and therefore the
functioning of the sandwich as a whole. Structural
sandwich panels with cellular core are used in
aircraft and automotive construction, in load
bearing structures and in sports equipment,
wherever weight-saving is required. The principal
advantage of sandwich panels is that the rigidities
can take any values in function of geometrical
parameters. Thus, the designer has the choice for
optimizing the material solution. Structural
sandwich panel is a structure, which is realised by Fig. 1.2 Geometry of composite material [5]
two skins separated by a lightweight core.
Structural sandwich represents a good compromise Sandwich panels are used for design and
between stiffness and lightness. construction of lightweight transportation systems
Aluminium sandwich construction has been such as satellites, aircraft, missiles, high speed
recognized as a promising concept for structural trains. Structural weight saving is the major
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design of light weight systems such as wings of consideration and the sandwich construction is
aircraft. A sandwich construction, which consists of frequently used instead of increasing material
two thin facing layers separated by a thick core, thickness.
The conventional single skin structure, which is of
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offers various advantages for design of weight

critical structure. Depending on the specific
mission requirements of the structures, aluminium
alloys, high tensile steels, titanium or composites
are used as the material of facings skins. Several
core shapes and material may be utilized in the
construction of sandwich among them; it has been
known that the aluminium honeycomb core has
excellent properties with regard to weight savings
and fabrication costs.
Sandwich structured composites are a special class
of composite materials which have become very
popular due to high specific strength and bending
stiffness. Low density of these materials makes
them especially suitable for use in aeronautical,
space and marine applications. Geometry of
sandwich plate shown in figure: 1.2.
single plates reinforced with main frames and
stiffeners normally necessitates a fair amount of
welding, and has a considerable length of weld
seams. Further, the lighter but thinner plates
employed tend to increase weld distortions that
may in some cases require more fabrication work to
rectify. More weld seams also mean a greater
number of fatigue initiation locations as well.
Honeycomb sandwich construction, with a
honeycomb core is sandwiched by two outer facing
skins is better able to cope with such difficulties.
Sandwich panels also provide added structural
weight savings in the structure. It is for these
reasons that the sandwich construction has been
widely adopted for large weight critical structures.
Honeycomb-cored sandwich panels have been used
as strength members of satellites or aircraft, thus
efficiently reducing their structural weight.

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Fig. 1.3 Structure of sandwich panel [6]
Sandwich composites primarily have two
components namely, skin and core as shown in
Figure 1.3. If an adhesive is used to bind skins with
the core, the adhesive layer can also be considered
as an additional component in the structure. The
thickness of the adhesive layer is generally
neglected because it is much smaller than the
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thickness of skins or the core. The properties of
sandwich composites depend upon properties of the
core and skins, their relative thickness and the
bonding characteristics between them.
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2-LITERATURE SURVEY:
Sanjib Goswami & Wilfried Becker [1] in 2000
worked upon lightweight sandwich construction is
very useful and common due to their superior
specific bending stiffness and bending strength. In
many cases the sandwich consists of an upper and
lower laminate face sheet and an intermediate
hexagonal cellular aluminium core. The sandwich
plate considered for this study is made up of two
composite face sheets (top and bottom) and
hexagonal aluminium honeycomb core is in
between them.
De-lamination and de-bonding is a very
fundamental problem for both composite and
sandwich materials. Due to some manufacturing
defects such as improper gluing of face sheet and
core material, there may exist a weak zone at the
interface of face sheet and core. Under a specific
loading, this weak zone may grow and ultimately
result in inter laminar or face sheet core de-bonding
and its possible growth, which is characterised by
the local discontinuity of materials between the
upper and lower sub-laminate. The embedded de-
lamination is dangerous as it cannot be seen from
outside and may cause a serious reduction in load
carrying capacity of the structure. The structure
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International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 2 Issue 3, March - 2013
having imbedded de-lamination may fail under
much lower load than usually expected.
The simplest way to implement Irwins
crack closure integral is to set up a detailed finite
element model with an initial crack and then to
extend the crack virtually by the edge length a of
the finite elements along the crack tip ligament and
simply to release the crack tip double node as
indicated in Fig. 2.1. Thus the crack closure
integral can be approximated in a form suitable for
finite element calculations as follow:
GI= Fyuy,
GII= Fxux.
Where, Fy and Fx are the forces in y and x
directions required to hold the crack faces closed
and uy and ux are the crack opening displacements.
Fig. 2.1 Contour plot showing the shear stress
variation and concentration at the interface of core
and face sheet.
In this study, hexagonal core thickness has been
considered as the study parameter and the energy
release behaviour when the hexagonal cell
thickness is very thin has been investigated. Fig.
2.2 shows the variation of energy release rate GII
with the crack length when the thickness of the
core is 4.0 mm. The figure reveals that the curve
starts at a much lower value than that of the
original curve of larger cell thickness. The peak
value of GII for the present study is slightly less but
comparable to the original figure of thick sandwich
plate. Concluding, it can be stated that in the case
of very thin core thickness, small de-laminations
are clearly more harmless than in the case of a
relatively thick core.
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Fig. 2.2 Variation of energy release rate GII for
normal cell wall thickness (solid line) and double
the normal cell wall thickness (dotted line).
Fig. 2.3 The variation of GII with the crack length
for single cell analysis (solid line) and double cell
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analysis (dotted line).
Within the investigations made so far it has been
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assumed that the unit cell appears periodically and
thus also the considered de-bonding. For larger de-
bonding this implies some interaction between
neighbouring de-bonding. In order to get some idea
of this interaction a (periodic) two-cell situation has
been analysed, where in one cell there is a de-
bonding and in the other cell there is no de-
bonding. Fig. 2.3 shows a comparative study of the
energy release rate GII for a single cell (solid line)
and two unit cells joined together (dotted line). The
variation of energy release rate GII for these two
cases shows that in the beginning with smaller
crack length, the energy release rate values are very
close, but as the crack length increases, the
difference also increases with higher GII values for
the two cell case. This observation can be
explained in the way that with smaller crack length,
the interaction between two adjacent cells is less
whereas with larger crack length, the interaction
gets significant.
V. Crupi, G. Epasto, E. Guglielmino [2] in 2012
worked upon lightweight components having good
mechanical properties and energy absorbing
capacity, especially in the transport industry. The
static bending tests produced various collapse
modes for panels with the same nominal size,
depending on the support span distance and on the
honeycomb cell size. Simplified collapse models
were applied to explain the experimental
www.ijert.org
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 2 Issue 3, March - 2013
observations and a good agreement between
predicted and experimental limit loads was
achieved.
Fig. 2.4 Peak load v/s sandwich deflection
According to the spring - mass model, it can be
assumed a linear relationship between the impact
load and the corresponding global displacement K b
of the sandwich panel and the Kbs stiffness is the
slope of this linear function. Moreover, the Kbs
stiffness doesnt change with the impact velocity.
The values of the peak loads Fmax were plotted vs.
the corresponding values of the deflection W b of
the mid-plane of the panel and a linear regression
was performed in order to obtain the values of the
stiffness Kbs for each sandwich typology (d = 3 and
6 mm), as shown in Fig. 2.4 For the case of low
values of impact force, the displacement of the
structure is negligible and the post-impacted
specimens did not show out-of-plane displacement
of the lower skin but only local displacement, so
the peak load has to be higher than a certain value
(the constant term of the linear function) to produce
the global displacement Wb. This behaviour is
confirmed by the low-velocity impact tests carried
out on the two typologies of honeycomb panels (d
= 3 and 6 mm) at a velocity of 1 m/s. The global
displacements wb are null for both the sandwich
typologies and the peak load is equal to 2100 N for
the honeycomb panel with d = 6 mm and to 2600 N
for the honeycomb panel with d = 3 mm.
N. Baral, D.D.R. Carti, I.K. Partridge, C. Baley, P.
Davies [3] in 2010 worked upon Sandwich panels of
the same areal weight and with the same
carbon/epoxy facings but using a novel foam core
reinforced in the thickness direction with pultruded
carbon fibre pins, do not show signs of damage
until above 1200 J impact energy. This suggests
that these will offer significantly improved
resistance to wave impact. Quasi-static test results
cannot be used to predict impact resistance here as
the crush strength of the pinned foam is more
sensitive to loading rate than that of the honeycomb
core.
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Fig. 2.5 Mean strength values, quasi-static tests
(error bars indicate standard deviations).
A comparison of the measured strengths of the
three materials under compression, shear and
tensile loading in standard tests is presented in Fig.
2.5. The quasi-static strength of the reference 64
kg/m3 honeycomb core is higher than that of the
pinned foam under both out-of-plane compression
and shear loading. However, the through thickness
tensile strength of the pinned foam is higher.
3-FUTURE WORK:
From the above related literature sandwich panel is
prepared by mathematical model and software
simulation. Based on maximum weight reduction in
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composite material is achieved and increase in
materials mechanical properties. New composite
material itself develops a new mechanical property.
By changing skin material and core material weight
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is more reduce to increase load carrying capacity in
automobile and aerospace industry and also
increase mechanical property of composite
material.
4-CONCLUSION:
From the above literature survey it may be
concluded that by using proper material and design
reduce weight of material. Using proper face sheet
material increase materials mechanical properties
like, strength, stress, shear stress, stiffness and
bending behaviour. Face sheet material is hard and
stiff and core material is light in weight and in core
material some shape is given like, triangle, square
and hexagon for weight reduction purpose and
stress distribution in material. By saving weight in
automobile and aero-space industry fuel efficiency
is increase and load carrying capacity of vehicle is
also increase.
REFERENCES:
[1] Sanjib Goswami, Wilfried Becker, Analysis of
debonding fracture in a sandwich plate with
www.ijert.org
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 2 Issue 3, March - 2013
hexagonal Core Composite Structures (2000) pp
385-392.
[2] V. Crupi, G. Epasto, E. Guglielmino, Collapse
modes in aluminium honeycomb sandwich panels
under bending and impact loading International
Journal of Impact Engineering (2012) pp 6-15.
[3] N. Baral, D.D.R. Cartie, I.K. Partridge, C.
Baley, P. Davies, Improved impact performance
of marine sandwich panels using through-thickness
reinforcement: Experimental results Composites
(2010) pp 117123.
[4] Robert m. jones. Mechanics of composite
materials ISBN: 1-56032-712-X.
[5] Salih N. Akour, Hussein Z. Maaitah. Effect of
Core Material Stiffness on Sandwich Panel
Behavior Beyond the Yield Limit Proceedings of
the World Congress on Engineering 2010, Vol II.
[6] K.Kantha Rao, K. Jayathirtha Rao,
A.G.Sarwade, B.Madhava Varma, Bending
Behavior of Aluminum Honey Comb Sandwich
Panels International Journal of Engineering and
Advanced Technology (IJEAT), ISSN: 2249
8958.
[7] Rybicki EF, Kanninen. A Finite element
calculation of stress intensity factors by a modified
crack closure integral Eng Fracture Mech 1977
[8] Hazizan MA, Cantwell WJ. The low velocity
impact response of foam-based sandwich
structures Composites: Part B 2002, pp 193-204.
[9] Wennberg, David, "Light-Weighting
Methodology in Rail Vehicle Design through
Introduction of Load Carrying Sandwich Panels",
April 2011, Centre for Eco2 Vehicle Design
Department of Aeronautical and Vehicle
Engineering.
[10] Kujala, P., Mets, A. and Nallikari, All steel
sandwich panels for ship applications Shipyard
Spin-off Project, Helsinki University of
Technology, Ship Laboratory, Otaniemi, M-196,
1995.
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